Barrage at Rest
Cannons of Fort Phoenix, Fairhaven, Massachusetts
Copyright, Michael V. Matheron
The cannons have grown silent
Were they stilled by death
Or was I?
Bob Quigley
Memorial Day – Barrage at Rest
Tag: veterans
Memorial Day 2024
For nearly a decade now many have seemingly invited strife and battle into our lives. Many young, many old, have never learned or have forgot the bloodstained horrors of civil war. They, like those summer soldiers of 1861, have the look of, have the sound of pleading for violent revolution, and they, like the civil warriors of 1861 believe it will all be over and decided by next Christmas. So strong do they believe themselves to be; one marvels at the confidence that only self pride can muster from those who know nothing of war, war up close, cheek by jowl, bleeding into each other. There’s a certain feeling of inevitability about it, as though they have their eyes set of it as a prize that they’ll surely win. Yet, the ending of it all, should it come, will certainly, as do all ravenous conflits, resemble this instead:
Disabled
BY WILFRED OWEN
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees,
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,—
In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
All of them touch him like some queer disease.
There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now, he is old; his back will never brace;
He’s lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.
One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,
After the matches carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,
He thought he’d better join. He wonders why.
Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts.
That’s why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,
He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of, all their guilt,
And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.
Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.
Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come
And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?
No Tax Credits for You, Senator DeMint Tells Veterans
November 11, 2011
Yesterday, the terribly ineffective U.S. Senate agreed on something, and astonishingly, it was a jobs bill, heretofore a non-starter. However, in a nearly unanimous vote on the “Vow to Hire Heroes” bill they agreed that it just might be good policy – and just plain decent – to offer a tax credit to businesses that hire veterans. Furthermore, the bill contains far more than the tax credit provisions ($5,600/veteran; $9,600/disabled veteran). Here’s how the tightfisted House GOP Chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee wrote of what this bill would provide:
• Expanding Education & Training: To begin moving veterans out of the unemployment lines, the VOW to Hire Heroes Act of 2011 provides nearly 100,000 unemployed veterans of past eras and wars with up to 1-year of additional Montgomery GI Bill benefits to qualify for jobs in high-demand sectors, from trucking to technology. It also provides disabled veterans who have exhausted their unemployment benefits up to 1-year of additional VA Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment benefits.
• Improving the Transition Assistance Program (TAP): Too many service members don’t participate in TAP and enter civilian life without a basic understanding of how to compete in a tight job market. Therefore, the VOW to Hire Heroes Act will make TAP mandatory for most service members transitioning to civilian status, upgrade career counseling options, and job hunting skills, as well as ensuring the program is tailored to individuals and the 21st Century job market.
• Facilitating Seamless Transition: Getting a civil service job can often take months which often forces a veteran to seek unemployment benefits. To shorten the time to start a federal job after discharge, this bill would allow service members to begin the federal employment process by acquiring veterans preference status prior to separation. This would facilitate a more seamless transition to civil service jobs at VA, or the many other federal agencies that would benefit from hiring our veterans.
• Translating Military Skills and Training: This bill will also require the Department of Labor to take a hard look at how to translate military skills and training to civilian sector jobs, and will work to make it easier to get the licenses and certification our veterans need.
• Veterans Tax Credits: The VOW to Hire Heroes Act provides tax credits for hiring veterans and disabled veterans who are out of work. “
It’s that final Veterans Tax Credits that set DeMint’s pants on fire.
Senateloon Jim DeMint, One Is a Lonely Number. Even I, a longtime non-supporter of DeMint, was surprised by his vote against this bill, the single vote that stole unanimity from the Senate (of the 95 voting Senators). Here’s what he had to say about the Vow to Hire Heroes bill: “We’re pandering to different political groups with programs that have proven to be ineffective. All Americans deserve the same opportunity to get hired. I cannot support this tax credit because I do not believe the government should privilege one American over another when it comes to work.”
Let’s hope the Senate doesn’t bring up a vote on a bill called “Tax Shelters for Corporate Golden Toilet Seats,” or “More Handouts for Citizens Who Lost More Than Two Hundred Million Dollars in Fiscal Year 2010.” Mr. DeMint would surely again oppose federal intervention like that as well, would he not?
Boehner Accidentally Tells the Truth About Tax Cuts
September 16, 2011
Mr. Boehner: “And here in Washington, there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the economy and it’s led to an awful lot of bad decisions. And the reality is that employers will hire if they’ve got the right incentives, but the incentives have to outweigh the costs. As an example, businesses aren’t going to hire someone because the government’s going to give them a $4,000 tax credit, if the government mandates that are imposed on them cost a lot more than that temporary credit. In our recent years, these mandates have been overwhelming.”
“Government’s threat to job creation has two other components. One is the current tax code which discourages investments and rewards special interest. It strikes me as odd that at a time when it’s clear the tax code needs to be fundamentally reformed, the first instant to come out of Washington is to come up with a new host of tax credits that make the tax code more complex.”
In fact, what he criticizes is actually the ultimate Republican tax-cutting plan: It rewards the private sector for acting in its own best interest. And it gives wary companies that are now just hoarding their profits in cash the confidence that can get them to start expanding again.
And, it’s also the ultimate Democratic jobs-generating plan: It guarantees results before federal tax dollars are spent.
Moreover, it’s the ultimate tea party no-new-taxes/no-new-programs populist plan: It produces the new jobs without government adding more taxation or more reams of red tape.
And it is, by definition, the most shovel-ready plan any economist can conjure: By using job-generating tax credits to prime our economic pumps, not a dollar of taxpayer money would be spent before the private sector has created and filled the jobs.
A side benefit of this is that it is not one of those programs that reward the special interests that have invested in our politicians — presidents, senators and representatives — by giving them campaign money as a down payment for future access and consideration. All employers have a chance at getting this tax credit — all they need to do is hire new employees.
Now it turns out the template for this approach was just created. On Aug. 5, President Barack Obama announced a program to give companies tax credits for hiring unemployed military veterans. Employers hiring unemployed veterans would get a $2,400 maximum credit for every short-term hire and $4,800 for every long-term hire. The plan would give companies a $9,600 maximum credit for every long-term hire of a veteran with service-connected disabilities.
Well, if this works for creating jobs for unemployed military veterans, why not expand it to include all unemployed Americans? That Republican-sounding idea was raised by the former chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer: “There are 15 million other unemployed people,” Romer said. “Let’s do a big tax cut for any firm that’s willing to hire. Someone, I think, ought to be making the case for swinging for the fences, not small programs.”
GOP mantra, though, “no taxation without representation; no taxation with representation.”
The Unnecessary Warfare Over “Pershing’s Last Patriot,” WWI Corporal Frank Buckles
March 4, 2011
“I was never actually looking for adventure, it just came to me.”
Frank Buckles, the “Last Doughboy,” 2008 interview
The Associated Press
“When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. . .” Ernest Hemingway, Men at War. As you’ll read, Frank Buckles – World War One’s last doughboy – was adept at the kind of understatement in his quote above. In his remarkable 110 years, Frank Buckles made understatement his art form. Although, it’s true, he did slip up occasionally, like when he was 16 and overstated his age to enlist to fight in the Great War. But his claim that he was “not looking for adventure” is one of his more memorably conservative self-appraisals. And, beginning last week, “adventure” came calling again, despite his quiet passing in West Virginia on February 27th. Gone, Frank Buckles, U.S. Army Corporal, 1st Fort Riley Casual [unassigned] Detachment, in death, the last American to have served in the Great War, the War of the Nations, the “war to end war.”
To Corporal Buckles’ great disappointment, though, he never served on the front lines of the western front, but not for lack of trying: he once jokingly said, “Didn’t I make every effort?” The record bears him out. As an ambulance driver behind the lines in 1918, Buckles had been distant from the worst of the fighting in the Marne valley. With succinct understatement, however, he remembered, “I saw the results.” Perhaps underneath his modesty, he recalled much the same vision that inspired World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon, to write:
Do You Remember The Stretcher-Cases Lurching Back
With Dying Eyes And Lolling Heads–Those Ashen-Grey
Masks Of The Lads Who Once Were Keen And Kind And Gay?
Have You Forgotten Yet?…
Look Up, And Swear By The Green Of The Spring That You’ll Never Forget.
Insult and Injury. The unnecessary controversy continues over whether or not Frank W. Buckles, America’s last WWI veteran, ought to lay in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. It brings with it a bad taste, bordering on disgust. Our nation’s two congressional leaders are embarrassing themselves, and for no good reason. Since this began a few days ago, neither Speaker of the House John Boehner nor Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, both of whom must sign off on the proposal, have been forthright (or courageous) enough to explain their reasoning, if any. If they are invertebrates on something like this, so reliant on spokespersons to do their talking, to do their dirty work . . . well, it’s very un-Frank Buckles, to say the very least. If their attitude signifies a royal decree, perhaps they hope public distaste will fade as discussions of budgets, spending cuts, and Charlie Sheen’s return to tv this week. But I don’t think we ought to let Charlie Buckles down.
The Persistence of Memory. Remember Mr. Speaker, your solemn words just four months ago Veterans Day 2010: “Today, we pause to pay proper respect to the heroes who have donned the uniform of our country and — along with their families — sacrificed so much so that we may enjoy the blessings of freedom.”
Reid’s negative position is difficult to understand as well. His record on veterans affairs is distinguished. The sight of Boehner and Reid digging in their feet on this when they can agree on almost nothing else is, to put it mildly, surprising, bordering on mysterious and foolish. There’s just got to be a principle or two lurking here, particularly since this issue is embarrassing to both leaders. Perhaps they don’t realize this? Considering their own silence on this, all we can do is speculate, and comment on some possibilities.
The “Not Just Anyone” Test. First, gentlemen, we all understand that “not just anyone” may be accorded the signal national tribute of lying in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. Agreed. No argument there. And in truth, I don’t believe this issue motivates Boehner or Reid, but it should. Surely Frank Buckles represents more than an individual. He represents the literal last soldier of a generation – the more than four and a half million U.S. WWI veterans, two million of whom served in combat on the killing grounds called battlefields of that unthinkably cruel war. From mid-1917 to the armistice on November 11, 1918, more than 115,000 Americans died, and nearly 400,000 were wounded standing duty as the German army launched their last offensive to win the war. As the final representative of that group of men and women, Frank Buckles, both the man and the icon, passes the “not just anybody” test with colors flying.
The Floodgate Test. Of course, there may be more requests for this illustrious honor. Yet, as far as precedent is concerned, should Frank Buckles be awarded this singular homage, how many others in future will be able to meet the very precedent Corporal Buckles would thereby set? Yes, in years to come, the last U.S. veteran of all our wars will pass away, from World War 2 to Korea to Vietnam to Persian Gulf to Afghanistan. Using the precedent of Frank Buckles, should he or she be allowed to lay in honor in the Rotunda, each too will indeed have a valid call on the same tribute based upon the “Frank Buckles precedent.” And, my larger point is, they ought to lay in honor, just as Frank Buckles ought to lay in honor, and each, in turn, set precedent for all who follow. It’s a precedent we all can live with.
As years grow into decades – and in Frank Buckles’ case, decades expanded to nearly a century – our nation needs reminders of a glorious past where courage overtook fear. The First World War brought carnage unthinkable in prior history, but within the expanding industrial revolution, horrors were unleashed with devastating weapons, munitions, tanks, and artillery; the subversion of chemistry and physics produced mustard gas, phosgene, and chlorine; the elements themselves combined with trench warfare conditions to kill tens of thousands through exposure and disease; and let’s not overlook the often careless and craven leadership on all sides that sent thousands to their deaths in senseless charge after charge through barbed wire and mud directly into enemy machine guns and grenades.
Let The Memories Persist. The Great War is a war to be remembered, and often, and to the extent that Frank Buckles reminds us of the suffering and bravery and senselessness of the “war to end war,” he will serve as a learning moment for us all. It’s the kind of service Corporal Frank Buckles (1911-2011) undertook in 1918, and later in life as he stood often to propose a permanent WWI memorial in Washington, D.C. Laying in honor is an honor he would not have sought, but in his understated way, it’s one that “Pershing’s Last Patriot” would have quietly appreciated.